Those things first began spreading outward from a small workshop belonging to the Wu family…
In Jiangning’s textile trade, there had always been a number of dazzling figures in everyone’s eyes—people skilled in business, skilled in calculation, shining on various stages, displaying their talents: Su Tan’er, for instance, or Xi Junyu, or the Wu brothers Wu Qilong and Wu Qihao, or Wu Chenghou himself, or Xue Sheng, or even the older generation’s Su Yu—all had their own noteworthy accomplishments, which was how they’d come to hold their present standing.
These people, skilled in business, could likely have made their mark in any trade. But there were also those skilled in technique—each house possessed, to some degree, its own particular strengths, and to some extent owed its standing to the support of such people. Among these, the most renowned name by far belonged to the Wu family’s Needle-God Luo.
Luo Minzhi of the Wu family was one of the most important elders within the Wu family, Jiangning’s foremost cloth house. Now in his early forties, he had single-handedly pushed the Wu family’s weaving craftsmanship to its peak. Over these recent years, though the Su, Xue, and Wu families each held their own strengths in a three-way balance, the Su and Xue families’ respective advantages, whatever they were, had never been anything decisive enough to create a clear gap. Only the Wu family’s weaving, at the highest level, had always stood a cut above the rest—and this was due entirely to Luo Minzhi’s years of effort.
These days, this steward of the Wu family no longer concerned himself with much of the day-to-day trivia. He enjoyed visiting pleasure houses, drank heavily, loved being flattered, and had a rather unrestrained personality—though when it came to weaving craftsmanship, he was undeniably a man of genuine brilliance. The Wu family gave him everything he wanted, and in return, all he needed to concern himself with was maintaining their lead in weaving technique. Recently, though, he had grown somewhat busier than usual.
As the Wu family’s most trusted steward, matters concerning the imperial merchant title—the workshops and warehouses in particular—were effectively under his oversight and supervision. For him, this was less a burden than an honor; on the technical side, both weaving and dyeing had already been fully resolved. What remained for him to do was simply oversee the workshops as they produced the cloth destined for the palace, have it strictly inspected, and store it in the warehouse, ready to be sent to Bianliang as the first shipment before long.
It seemed like heavy responsibility, but in truth, the Wu family had plenty of people capable of handling it. Luo Minzhi was the nominal head of this operation, but the actual work was naturally carried out by the stewards already in charge of these workshops and warehouses. Luo Minzhi merely came by once a day to check in; the rest of the time, his eldest son Luo Xia held things down, cultivating good relations with the various stewards and managers—also as preparation for Luo Xia’s eventual entry into the Wu family’s management ranks.
Luo Xia hadn’t truly inherited his father’s gift for weaving, but having idolized his father since childhood, he was at least commendably diligent, if not particularly innovative—someone who could reliably maintain what already existed, even if he couldn’t break new ground. Following the proper path, step by step, learning steadily, becoming a competent, methodical steward—there wasn’t much wrong with this life plan, and with the Wu family now poised for major expansion, this was precisely the moment for him to make his mark.
Entrusted with this responsibility by his father, he worked hard to maintain good relations with the many stewards and managers, laying groundwork for the future. Beyond that, his daily inspections were also thorough and meticulous—though even so, there wasn’t much of real technical substance or practical action to be found in the role.
He understood, of course, that overseeing these matters meant that having nothing go wrong was the normal state of affairs. His father had really only sent him here to meet the other elders and build relationships, without expecting him to actually accomplish much. Still, the young man had already spent several years working in the Wu family’s cloth house, mostly learning small administrative tasks under his father in the weaving workshops. Now finally entrusted with a significant responsibility, his days had become even more tedious than before—there simply wasn’t anything for him to actually do. He felt some disappointment about this, though on the other hand, he could only console himself with the business wisdom that those who accomplish great things must first learn to endure tedium.
A month of following routine, chatting daily with a few of the elders—mostly about Luo Minzhi’s accomplishments.
This time, securing the imperial merchant title had come about partly through Wu Qilong and the others cleverly obtaining the dye formula that had originally belonged to the Su family, but the other decisive factor had been Luo Minzhi’s weaving craftsmanship. Without it, if the cloth had simply been the same color through ordinary means, the Wu family’s advantage wouldn’t have amounted to much, and it wouldn’t have been so easy to let the Su family understand the situation and withdraw in defeat. At the banquet a month earlier, when the Su family’s Ning Liheng had understood enough to angrily throw his own family’s cloth out the window, it had been precisely because of Needle-God Luo’s involvement.
Of course, while the young man felt some pride talking about his father all day, on the other hand, constantly discussing the same subject with others grew rather tedious too. Some of the stewards liked to talk to him about matters of the pleasure quarters; though Luo Xia, already married, wasn’t entirely inexperienced in such things, his honest, upright nature made him somewhat uncomfortable discussing such topics with these worldly uncles and elders, let alone accompanying them to such places. He went about his daily rounds through the various workshops and warehouses, keeping methodical records; with uncles and elders present at each location, there was little room for him to take charge himself. But perhaps because of this very nature of his, one day at the end of September, he became the first to notice something amiss.
“Father, those Splendid Gold Brocades in the small warehouse over by Qinming Tower—they seem to be fading a bit…”
He brought this up rather uncertainly one evening while they were eating dinner at home. Fading was a serious matter; Luo Minzhi froze for a moment, then said, “Over by Qinming Tower? That was the first batch. Steward He at the dye house did mention it might not turn out well… but where exactly did you see this?”
“The ones in the corner.”
“In the corner… those are the discards. That’s from the very first batch, and Steward Chen and I felt they weren’t quite up to standard, so we just tossed them there. The corner’s damp, too, so some fading’s to be expected… Mm, we’ll go take a look tomorrow morning.”
Recently, the Wu family had been preparing for further expansion once the imperial merchant title stabilized, and as one of the family’s most prominent figureheads, Luo Minzhi found himself with a fair number of banquets and social obligations to attend. A full month had passed already—if anything were going to go wrong, it should have happened by now. Many in Jiangning’s textile trade had nearly put the Su family out of mind entirely. With everything so stable, what further complications could possibly arise?
Still, Luo Minzhi was a man who understood the weight of such matters, and since his son had brought it up, he went with Luo Xia the next day to check the small warehouse near Qinming Tower. Sure enough, that bolt of brocade was indeed from the very first batch produced with the newly acquired dye formula—he’d tried using it as a test of the weaving method and had discarded it out of dissatisfaction. Discarded cloth, after all, left sitting in a dim, damp corner—some griminess was inevitable. The fading wasn’t particularly noticeable, and he reassured his son before letting the matter drop.
Luo Minzhi didn’t dwell on the discarded cloth, and Luo Xia set the matter aside for the time being as well, continuing his daily rounds through the various workshops and warehouses. The imperial merchant title had already been secured, and within about a month, the first shipment of two hundred and twenty bolts of Splendid Gold Brocade would need to go out. This particular brocade had become something of a signature product for the Wu family, and couldn’t simply be mass-produced without restraint—these few small workshops worked day and night, continually attempting refinements and quality selection. Some of the earliest bolts produced had been culled out for various shortcomings. Day after day, watching the weaving, the dyeing, the finished cloth—all that brilliant gold color—one day, Luo Xia found himself back at that discard warehouse by Qinming Tower once more.
The fading on that bolt in the corner had grown noticeably more pronounced. Though it was natural enough for cloth left in a corner to fade somewhat, an uneasy premonition flickered through Luo Xia’s mind nonetheless. On a nearby shelf sat several other discarded bolts of brocade, kept in somewhat better condition; he opened the box and looked them over—several no longer showed quite that same golden-yellow hue.
“Just freshly mixed using the formula taken from the Su family—of course there’ll be some variation. None of this batch could ever be shown to anyone anyway…”
These were his father’s words from before. Luo Xia thought it over, then went back to check some of the other finished cloth. True to the name Splendid Gold Brocade, every bolt he saw remained a brilliant golden-yellow, magnificently so. Yet over the following days, those few faded bolts kept surfacing in his thoughts, leaving him somewhat distracted. By now it was already October. One day he went to the warehouse and directly opened the boxes of brocade that had already been sealed away, pulling them out one by one and laying them out. By the time Steward Qin, who oversaw this particular warehouse, came by, the silks had already piled up over two meters high on the table, their golden brilliance almost dazzling. No one could stop Luo Xia; he kept going, and strangely enough, several of the warehouse workers had joined in opening boxes as well.
“Luo Xia! You—” Steward Qin’s words trailed off, because by now he too had seen it: amid that pile of golden silk, unmistakably, two bolts showed a distinctly different color. Luo Xia turned around, a bolt of cloth in his arms.
“Uncle Qin, something’s wrong with the first batch of Splendid Gold Brocade…”
Steward Qin hesitated only a moment before suddenly waving his hand. “Open them! Open all of them!”
When word reached Luo Minzhi and Wu Qilong that something was wrong with the first batch of Splendid Gold Brocade, everyone was thoroughly alarmed. Still, thankfully, the rest of the cloth proved sound. Once everything had been laid out together, only those few bolts showed pronounced fading, while the rest remained uniform and consistent—at least confirming that the later batches were fine, and that the problem had stemmed from some minor issue back when the Wu family had still been unfamiliar with the dye formula.
“We still don’t quite know where the problem lies. We’ve made some adjustments to the formula these past few days, but we’ll need to go back and investigate properly, to see what’s actually causing this. Well—at least we caught it in time. That’s the best outcome we could hope for under the circumstances.”
The unfaded bolts were stacked together, their golden brilliance forming what looked like an unshakeable wall. Amid the relief, Wu Qilong ordered an investigation into the cause, after which the cloth would be repacked. Small setbacks like this were common enough in business; now that this one had passed, Luo Xia, who had discovered the issue, was even rewarded for it. With only twenty days remaining until the first delivery for the imperial merchant title, little work remained. The workshops continued their vigorous pace, and no one spoke further of the fading issue. The warehouse door where the cloth was stored was shut, the key kept personally by Steward Qin. But just a few days later, things took a turn for the worse.
On the afternoon of the ninth day of October, a worker passing by the warehouse door noticed that the room—which these past few days only Steward Qin had been allowed to enter—stood open. He walked inside. In the dim light of the warehouse, Steward Qin sat off to one side; already somewhat elderly, his hair and beard entirely white, he had seemed rather haggard these past few days, which others had simply attributed to overwork. But only now did certain things finally begin to show themselves clearly.
Steward Qin sat there, his gaze somewhat vacant, his expression haggard, one hand trembling, staring fixedly at the stacked bolts of cloth on the other side of the room, as though he had seen something terrible.
The worker called out to him, but the old man showed no response, so he turned and shouted, “Someone, come quick!” Turning back to look at the pile of cloth again, he suddenly noticed that in the dim room, the once-uniform wall of fabric now showed a jarring, uneven contrast—mixed among it, some eight or nine bolts had changed color, some more, some less, no longer that original brilliant gold. The faded bolts, scattered among the golden wall, now looked almost like some bizarre face, two eyes set unevenly one above the other, a twisted mouth stretched wide, grinning out from within the room…
Even the daylight seemed to have lost its color, held back at the doorway, reluctant to enter. What had perhaps happened months before within the Su family’s cloth workshops now seemed to be repeating itself here, piece by piece, as though copied wholesale.
Not far off, in the workshops, laborers still worked vigorously, bolt after bolt of new cloth being dyed, stewards chatting and laughing among the crowds, everyone moving forward according to plan, toward what they believed would be a bright future…
…
When the news reached him, Wu Qilong was in the middle of tea with Luo Minzhi at an elegantly furnished teahouse, discussing innovations for the second batch of tribute cloth and preparing for a meeting that evening with a major cloth merchant to resolve a shortage in the annual tribute stock. A worker approached and quietly informed him of what had happened.
“What did you say?” The voice had been too quiet; Wu Qilong felt he hadn’t heard properly, and asked him to repeat it.
“Steward Qin has fallen ill, and… the cloth is fading…”
“Wha— what cloth is fading?”
“The Splendid Gold Brocade…”
“I know it’s the Splendid Gold Brocade! Haven’t those faded pieces already been sorted out! We haven’t even found the cause yet—what exactly are you trying to tell me…”
“But…” The worker repeated what had happened at the workshop and warehouse once more. Even after hearing it a second time, Wu Qilong still found it difficult to believe. He understood every word, yet couldn’t form any concrete picture of it in his mind. With just over ten days left before delivery to the palace, the cloth… could it really all be compromised? Fading?
“You… what exactly are you saying?” He tilted his head, his gaze unsteady, then turned back. “What exactly is fading…”
A month and a half had passed. By now, certain things had finally accumulated enough force to shatter the beautiful, deliberately constructed illusion that had persisted like paradise throughout that month and a half—and now, it began dragging everyone, mercilessly, back down to earth…
At that moment, Ning Yi was just stepping out of the small laboratory beside the academy, closing the door behind him on this late-autumn, early-winter afternoon, preparing to head home. He’d had little in the way of social obligations lately, and hardly needed to greet most people in the household anymore—unusually at ease.